CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The first tremors struck kellios just before sunrise. Charis had awakened in the dead of night, feeling the sultry, stifling air thicken to a suifocating blanket. When she could no longer breathe, she rose and went to her balcony to stand before the softly shimmering city. Oceanus rolled restlessly in her bed; a smattering of stars shone red in the night-gray sky, and Charis knew that the end had come.
She accepted this with the icy calm of the bull pit and looked her last upon the sleeping city.
From out of the mountains far away she heard the deep, deep rumbling of summer thunder. So it begins, she thought. Dream on, Atlantis; the day of your death is upon you. Farewell.
She turned away as the rumble became a vibration, slight, insignificant. Dogs in the city began whining and howling. They knew. Soon everyone would know.
She dressed in the clothes she had chosen for this day-a simple, sturdy linen tunic with her wide leather Belt and sandals from the bullring. With practiced fingers she braided her hair and bound it in the white leather thong, put her favorite golden chain around her neck, and walked quickly from her room to sound the alarm-a Bell she had had installed in the center of the portico where it could be heard throughout the palace. With the last peals quivering on the air, Charis hurried on to Annubi’s chambers.
She pushed open the door without knocking arid stepped inside. Annubi was within, sitting at his small table, the Lia Fail before him in its gopherwood box, his eyes red-rimmed and tired. “It is begun,” Charis told him.
He nodded and closed his eyes “Yes,” he whispered.
“Then gather your things and come with me to the harbor. We will wait for Belyn there.”
“Belyn will not come,” said Annubi. “I will stay here.”
“No, I want you with me.” The authority in her voice could not be argued with. Annubi shrugged and rose to his feet, hauling up a cloth-wrapped bundle. He thrust the Lia Fail into the bundle, gazed around the room one last time, and stepped toward the door.
The vibration had ceased, but the air still hung heavy and was now tinged with a sharp, metallic smell. The wailing of the dogs echoed through the palace like eerie music.
In the main corridor they met Lile, shaken and nervous, cradling a drowsy Morgian in her arms and holding tight to her courage. She rushed to meet Charis and, taking her hand, asked, “Is it time?”
“Yes,” replied Charis. “Where is my father?”
“Why, asleep in his bed.”
“Wake him and get on with your duties.”
Lile hesitated. “Give roe the child,” Charis told her, lifting Morgian from her arms. “Go now. And hurry.”
Lile fled back through the corridor. “Take Morgian,” Charis told Annubi, handing him the little girl. The seer recoiled with distaste but accepted the child, who began crying after her mother. “Wait with the wagons,” Charis instructed. Annubi shambled out into the trembling night.
Charis saw to each of the arrangements she had made, moving from one task to the next with cold efficiency. The last weeks had been physically and emotionally exhausting- amassing a small mountain of supplies and tools and packing it all, sealing what she could against seawater; rehearsing the plans she and Lile had made for evacuation with scores of unwilling, often contemptuous, royal functionaries; selling off palace treasures for ready gold and silver; buying and outfitting a fleet of fishing boats to carry people and cargo to deeper waters should need arise; supervising the loading of wagon after wagon with the raw materials for survival-a monumental labor, a tapping of deep, unknown reserves of energy, tact, and will. Now that the final dread moment had come, she could be calm. The world might well crumble around her, but the end would not see her rushing around in undignified panic. She woke those of her overseers still asleep and set them about their prearranged tasks. “Do not stop to think,” she told the fearful. “Do exactly what we have planned and do it quickly.”
In this way, when the first tremors shook the palace hours later, loosing a rain of roof tiles that clattered noisily down in the courtyard, the wagons were already assembled in ranks-ten rows, four abreast-passengers and drivers waiting. Horses reared, their eyes rolling with wild fright in the torchlight. Their handlers leapt forward to drag them down, blindfolding the animals with strips of cloth.
Charis stood on the steps, hands on her hips. “What can be keeping Lile? Must I do it all myself?”
“Princess Charis,” came a voice nearby, “we should take the horses out. If the gates collapsed”
“I know, I know! We are waiting for the king. Go back to your place.”
The man disappeared, and Charis stomped back into the palace to find Lile and Avallach. The second quake struck as she hurried through the long gallery to the king’s chamber. The stone flagging trembled beneath her feet and she heard a distant grinding sound-as if someone were crushing grain between two tremendous querns.
She burst through the door of her father’s room to find Avallach fully dressed and sitting in a chair, Lile at his feet, begging him to get up and come with her. He turned his head as she entered. Ignoring Lile, Charis said, “Father, it is time to go. Everyone is waiting for you to lead them.”
The king shook his head. “I must stay here. My place is here.”
“Your place is with your people.”
“Take Lile and the others. Leave me.”
“We will not go without you, Father,” she said firmly.
“You must go or you will die.”
“Then we will die!” she snapped. “But we will not go without you.”
Avallach rose slowly to his feet; Lile handed him his crutch and led him to the carriage where Annubi and Morgian already waited. Lile and Avallach climbed in and Charis signaled the driver to leave. As soon as the king’s carriage cleared the gate, the other wagons rolled ahead, passing one by one through the outer gates as the ground trembled uneasily beneath the wheels.
Charis waited until the last wagon had cleared the gate and then mounted her horse, pausing in the darkness to look one last time at her ancestral home before leaving it forever. The wagons reached Kellios quickly but found the streets choked with people who had fled their homes and now rushed about in stark panic as one tremor after another shook the ground.
The sound of their wailing was deafening. Charis rode forth, slashing her way through the tumult with her reins, forcing a way through for the wagons to follow. She led her entourage to the harbor and out onto the stone quay, where they stopped to await the ships all desperately hoped would come.
They waited and the sky lightened to a ghastly, sulfurous dawn. From the temple district came the mournful lowing of the bulls. A pall of dust hung over the city like a fog, motionless in the dead air. Annubi strode up and down the quay along the row upon row of wagons. At last he came to stand beside Charis. “It seems to be abating,” he said. “The tremors are losing strength and frequency.”
Charis looked down at his face, pale in the earthly light. “Then we may still have time,” she said.
With the sunrise the tremors stopped and the frightened populace promptly forgot their fear and began going about their normal activities. Those waiting on the quay-nearly five hundred people altogether, the entire population of the palace: masons, artists, carpenters, farmers and herders, stewards and servants and palace functionaries of various types, along with their families, all of whom Charis had promised places in the boats-grew restless as they gawked around at a world that now appeared as solid and permanent as ever.
Charis remained firmly resolved, and as the early hours of the day passed she kept everyone busy transferring the cargo from the wagons to the fishing boats. The sun rose into a stark sky where it lingered interminably, pouring its white heat onto the baking earth Below; and as the burning disk began its downward slide toward the sea, the last of the cargo was secured and still there was no sign of the rescue ships.